Ouled Nail Dance Festival

A festival spanning the Djelfa and Biskra steppe region dedicated to Ouled Nail dance, a tribal tradition properly called Naili dance, showcasing traditional costume, jewelry and rhythmic performance historically documented, and often exoticized, in nineteenth and twentieth-century European travel writing and Orientalist painting of the region.

The Ouled Nail, an Arab tribal confederation historically centered in Djelfa and neighboring Bou Saada in Algeria's steppe country, developed a distinctive dance tradition sometimes mislabeled Bou Saada dance but more properly called Naili dance after the tribe itself, and this festival gives that specific dance heritage a dedicated platform distinct from Djelfa's separate fantasia horsemanship festival, which focuses on equestrian rather than dance performance.